`Govt websites must follow security guidelines`

New Delhi: All government websites must adhere to the web security guidelines and those issued by the National Informatics Centre (NIC), Minister of State for Communications Sachin Pilot said Tuesday in the wake of the recent attack on the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) website.

In order to review the security measures of websites and issues related to cyber space, the minister also instructed the NIC to host a website only after the department concerned produces its security certification.

Pilot was speaking after a meeting with the department of information technology, the ministry of home affairs, Indian Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-In), the NIC and the CBI earlier in the day.

According to CERT-In, all government websites should be audited for quality and security prior to hosting. CERT-In has empanelled over 50 IT security auditors for check IT infrastructure of the organisations.

The minister also said that the number of Indian websites have witnessed a tremendous rise from 1.7 lakh in 2005 to 1 crore websites as of now. This demands the ministries and public sector enterprises pay close attention to cyber security guidelines.

Earlier this month, the CBI website was defaced by a group identifying itself as the Pakistani Cyber Army, which also claimed to have hacked the server of the National Informatics Centre.

The investigation agency had confirmed that its website was hacked and that it had no idea who was behind this attack.

According to a CBI official, the hackers posted a message on its website that read "Pakistan Zindabad".